Dark Eden

  “I do,” he said. “But if you want, I can tell her you don’t want her to go through with it.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure I can, but I don’t think she’ll listen. People around her are being cured. She wants that for herself.”

  “Yeah, I suppose you’re right.”

  “One last try—you sure you don’t want in? This opportunity might not come up again.”

  “I’m sure,” I said, and I was. Nothing could get me down into that hallway and through door number 6. They couldn’t make me do it.

  “Okay then, let’s get you back into Mrs. Goring’s basement.”

  We walked together down the path, then separated as we neared Fort Eden. Twenty minutes later he was knocking on Mrs. Goring’s door and she was yelling at him, but he was a persuasive guy for sure. Soon enough they were carrying the food over in cardboard boxes, and I was passing through a clearing at twilight.

  When I got back to the bomb shelter, it was after 8:00 PM and, missing Marisa, I started thinking unreasonable thoughts.

  Maybe I should just give up. I could be there for her. She’d like that.

  But I couldn’t do it. I was afraid of what would happen to me. But more than that, I was afraid of being in the room upstairs with all those people.

  I was alone, and that was how things were going to stay.

  By 11:00 PM I was convinced that Mrs. Goring had broken the entire system by throwing a can of beats at the wall (I’d found the can in question, dented and alone on the floor in the basement). The bubble of glass on Ben Dugan’s monitor hadn’t shattered out into the bomb shelter but stayed, like a broken windshield, and so I’d taken off my shoes without fear of stepping on a shard of glass. I got so frustrated at the blankness before me that I kicked the narrow bedpost and managed to stub my middle toe. I’d gotten hurt before trying to inflict punishment on inanimate objects. It was, I guess, a hobby of mine.

  I sat on the cot rubbing my toe and thought about the lawnmower in our garage, which sometimes took fifty pulls to start. The mower was a common recipient of my wrath; but it gave as good as it got, exacting scuffs and bruises. Its blank metal silence only made me angrier. Berzerk, with its menacing 2D robots, could also be particularly frustrating. At least with the Atari I could throw the controller or pound my fist on the game console when I got axed on the screen, both of which I did all the time.

  I was sitting on the cot, thinking of the mower and the Atari and my injured toe, when the main monitor sputtered to life. As it did, a line of smoke peeled out through the cracks in Ben Dugan’s monitor and up the white wall.

  “That can’t be good,” I said out loud, positioning the oversized monkey phones over my ears. I’d started calling them monkey phones on the off chance that it might amuse me, which it didn’t.

  The wisp of smoke became a thin line and vanished, but there was no mistaking the smell: burned plastic. Something was shorting out behind Ben’s monitor, threatening to catch fire and cook the entire system. I couldn’t help thinking that a bomb shelter was supposed to be the safest place on Earth when, in reality, a fire in the basement would more than likely kill me with ruthless efficiency.

  At least for the moment, the smoke was gone and the smell evaporated in the air. Looking at the main screen in the center of the wall, I saw Rainsford seated at the table, where I could make out his profile. He was at least seventy, with deep lines across his forehead and a gray widow’s peak on top of his head. He appeared to be playing a game of backgammon with Alex Chow while the other boys watched. Their words were faint, so far from the camera, and they all three had on the same kind of T-shirts: white with the letter E. The whole camp T-shirt idea felt hokey and unnecessary; but all the same, I was dying to have one.

  “What’s the rule on that again?” Connor asked, glaring at the board with what appeared to be confusion.

  “Splitting the number is fine, but he can’t land there or there,” said Rainsford, pointing to various places on the board I couldn’t see.

  “Dang it,” Alex said, shaking his leg in the space beside the round table.

  “Dude, your feet are messed up,” said Connor.

  “It’s just this one, keeps falling asleep,” said Alex. “It’s the pinpricking that really bugs me.”

  “Give it a day or two,” said Rainsford, a soft but commanding tone I’d grown used to. “You’ll be right as rain.”

  Connor wobbled a little at the table, as if he was drunk; and I wondered if they’d given him a sedative to calm him down after the cure. He started to get up, but Rainsford touched his hand.

  “Better stay here a while longer, then early to bed.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Connor agreed, settling back heavily in his chair. “I think I’ll watch you finish off Alex.”

  Ben had been sitting there writing a letter, but he’d stopped, shaking his hand as if writing was putting a profound strain on his fingers.

  Everyone that’s been cured has come back with an ailment, I thought.

  They seemed like minor things: Kate with her headaches; these guys with their hand, foot, and dizziness problems. Strange but, knowing what they’d been through, reasonable side effects. Maybe it was like chemotherapy, when the patient’s hair falls out. Eventually the hair grows back. Sooner or later these kids would stop having odd little problems.

  The three girls came out of their quarters all together, and Rainsford crooked his neck to watch them as they settled onto the couch on the far end of the room. It was dark in that corner, but I could make out their shadows and hear them talking with Rainsford and the boys.

  Avery sat nearest to the table, fidgeting as if she wanted to say something but couldn’t bring herself to do it.

  “Is there something on your mind, Avery?” Rainsford asked. He shook the dice for the game and threw them on the board, absently making his move. Avery looked stricken, as if she’d been caught in front of everyone doing something that was not allowed. Kate bumped up against her shoulder. The two of them had obviously talked, and Kate was either trying to offer solidarity or trick Avery into saying something she shouldn’t.

  “Did you and Davis have a fight?”

  Avery’s question turned every head in the room. Her words were sharp, very unlike her.

  “A difference of opinion, nothing more,” said Rainsford. “In any case, his work was through here. It was time for him to go.”

  “I can’t believe Will is out there and he won’t come in,” Kate said. News of Davis’s discovery had reached everyone. “What a nut job.”

  Ouch. That one stung, and I hoped Marisa would come to my rescue. But she was in a sullen mood, thoughtful and quiet.

  “But why did he have to leave so suddenly? I barely got to say good-bye. Can’t you invite him back for breakfast in the morning?” Avery pleaded.

  “Avery, you’re being pathetic,” Connor said.

  “Shut up.”

  “Just sayin’, everyone knows you like the guy. Just text him when you get home; what’s the big deal?”

  Avery pulled her knees to her chest and sulked, and Kate bored down on Connor with her violently blue eyes, an arm thrown around Avery’s shoulder.

  “Jeez, mellow out, you two,” said Connor. “It ain’t seventh grade.”

  Alex and Ben looked torn about who they should side with—the pretty girls or the top dog—and chose instead to ignore the situation completely.

  The room grew quiet and uninteresting, so I picked up The Woman in the Dunes. The bomb shelter was an ideal reading spot, with its good light and dead silence; and I’d reached the halfway point in the book earlier in the day. There were some disturbing coincidences in the plot line. An entomologist is lured down a ladder to the bottom of a deep sand dune on the promise that a rare insect is nesting there. When he gets down to the bottom, someone removes the ladder, and he finds a woman living at the bottom of the dune. She’s spent her entire life shoveling sand out of the hole, which I still don’t quite und
erstand; and now he’s trapped down there, forced to help her for the rest of his sorry life.

  Maybe it was the late hour or the confines of the bomb shelter or the fact that I was trapped like the man in the story. Or maybe it was the fact that Mrs. Goring, while she doesn’t know I’m here, had control over my comings and goings. Whatever the reasons, the book was bothering me, so I turned on my Recorder instead and listened to old audio sessions from Dr. Stevens’s office as I waited for the main room to clear out.

  Ten or fifteen minutes later, at about 11:30 PM, Avery went alone into the girls’ quarters and I switched views. She sat in the chair—the numbers 5 and 7 still clearly visible on the wall behind her—and began talking to Dr. Stevens.

  I don’t care about anything any more.

  Why do you say that? Did something happen?

  No, nothing. I just don’t care.

  I see.

  Do you know . . .

  Avery trailed off.

  What, Avery? What is it?

  Do you know how I can get in touch with Davis?

  He was a patient of mine a few years back, but I don’t think—

  I just want to talk to him.

  It’s technically not something I’m supposed to do, give out patient information.

  I know; it’s just—I think Rainsford chased him off. I don’t think he wants me talking to him.

  Do you have feelings for him?

  Who? Rainsford? God, no.

  Davis. Do you have feelings for Davis?

  He understands why I can’t be cured.

  You mean you told him?

  Avery shrugged, not willing to say.

  Talk to Rainsford. He’ll know what to do.

  But he won’t listen.

  Talk to him, before it’s too late.

  Too late for what?

  Avery, we’re nearing the end. Your chance to be cured is about to pass.

  I can’t be cured.

  You can.

  You don’t know what you’re talking about.

  Avery got up and walked out of the room. But as she did, as an act of defiance or I don’t know what, she dunked a paintbrush in a can of paint I couldn’t see and violently wiped out both the 5 and the 7.

  There. Happy now? Leave me alone.

  And then she was gone, and the room was empty. It seemed like a bad omen, both numbers destroyed on the wall; and stranger still, the paint she’d used was white. The 5 was hit the hardest: a thick glob obliterating the number. But by the time her stroke had reached the 7, the paint was thin and the 7 showed through. It was a black number7; and it looked for all the world as if it was fighting its way out of the white, unwilling to be destroyed so easily.

  I pushed the button for the main room and watched as nothing very interesting happened. Rainsford and the boys playing a meaningless game at the table, the girls checked out on the couch. It began to feel as if Rainsford was babysitting or waiting for something important to happen, the game only a prop, a deceptive reason to stay.

  My mind began to question: What had Davis said to Rainsford? And what about Davis and Avery? Even I knew they liked each other; it was obvious just from looking at their body language when they were together. Maybe Davis had discovered something bad about the program and been asked to leave.

  I paced back and forth in the bomb shelter and took off the headphones, tossing them on the cot. Scratching at the sides of my head, I started to have a conviction about Marisa.

  I can’t let her go through with it. I can’t.

  I’d have gladly stayed sick my whole life in exchange for having Marisa cured. But how could this be right? The depth of the basement of rooms, the bizarre treatments, the whole crazy mess—cure or no cure, I had to get to Marisa as fast as I could. I had to convince her not to go through with it. And then we had to get away.

  I don’t know how many minutes passed while I had these thoughts—three, five, ten? In the stillness of the bomb shelter, time seemed to stand still like that sometimes. It made me wonder what a prison would feel like, how time would begin to have no meaning at all; and it scared me. What if I never escaped the clearing and Fort Eden? What if this entire thing was designed to keep us prisoner, like the bug-man at the bottom of the dune in the story?

  I put the headphones on and glanced back at the main room, which had become surprisingly empty in the few minutes since I’d left it. The last of the guys were going through the doorway to their room, Rainsford was nowhere to be found, and Marisa was sitting in the dark-shadowed corner on the far couch. She was curled up in a ball; and if I had to guess, I would have said she was crying.

  Give it at least fifteen minutes, Will. Make sure they’re down for the night, I thought.

  My watch read almost midnight, a little early for everyone to turn in; but then Connor and Alex were the noisiest of the group, and they’d been cured earlier in the day. They’d be tired. Avery was upset, and Kate had become her confidante; probably they were sitting across from each other on one of the beds, whispering about Davis and cures and headaches. That left Marisa, who was like me, all alone now.

  Seven minutes later I couldn’t stand it. I didn’t even clean things up this time. I didn’t care.

  I threw on my backpack—the food and the water I had left would come in handy—and I turned for the door.

  I was going up there and getting Marisa, and the two of us were leaving Fort Eden.

  Opening the door to Fort Eden proved scarier than I’d imagined it would be. Plotting my escape and planning to take another participant with me made me feel as if Rainsford was my enemy. I hadn’t fully thought of him in that way before; but now, staring into the gloom, I felt his furious gaze from the deepest part of the fort.

  Something wasn’t right. Something was off. What was it? With only the faintest light to guide my steps, I searched my mind for what was wrong.

  What did I miss? What does he know?

  I held my Recorder in my hand, with my finger on the PLAY button. If I heard whispering or garbled voices, I’d be listening to Marisa’s favorite song before any kind of mind tricks could be played on me. I could get to the couch and give Marisa one earbud and we could listen together. How insanely romantic would that be? The very thought of it got me moving faster along the floor. I stopped caring. We were going to escape, us two, out the door and into the night. We’d listen to “I Wanna Be Adored” while we shivered in the woods, and the only thing to keep us warm would be each other. I was lost in this ridiculous dream when I reached the couch and discovered my mistake.

  It wasn’t Marisa curled up in a ball on the couch but Avery Varone, who looked up at me with tears in her eyes.

  “Will?”

  I pushed the button on my Recorder completely by accident, and the music began to play, soft and slow. It was a quiet song at the start, and I could hear Avery’s voice.

  “Oh, my God, Will, it is you.”

  In the time that I’d taken my eyes off the screen and decided to escape with Marisa, she’d gone to bed and been replaced by Avery.

  “Hi,” I said, and felt as if there was a potato stuck in my throat.

  “Sit down, it’s okay,” she said, wiping away mascara that had run down her cheeks. She was a pretty girl—not Kate Hollander, but pretty just the same. She had a desolate beauty up close, like an empty field of rolling hills.

  “I thought you were someone else,” I said, turning off the music and taking out the earbuds. Thank God I hadn’t put up my hoodie or she might have thought I was an executioner come to take her away.

  “Who?” she asked. “Who did you think I was?”

  “I thought you were Marisa,” I said. I was starting to shake, wondering what it would be like if everyone else came out of their rooms and found me here. They’d slash me apart with their words. Connor Bloom might even hit me. It could happen.

  And then there was Avery herself.

  I’m not sure she can be trusted.

  Don’t be ridiculous. Of course sh
e can. She’ll play her part; I’ll see to it.

  Were Dr. Stevens and Rainsford talking about Avery, or someone else?

  “You don’t need to worry,” Avery said, “I’m not going to tell. Davis said you might turn up. It’s why I waited.”

  This was a curious comment, and curiosity has a way of putting my sizzling brain to rest. It’s like two giant question marks can’t fit inside my head at the same time. I was considering what might happen if a group of my peers gathered around me, but I was also hopelessly interested in what Avery meant.

  Curiosity won and I sat down.

  “Where have you been?” asked Avery.

  “In the basement of the bunker,” I replied. “What happened between Davis and Rainsford?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Avery said, turning away as if the words were so frustrating they were making her want to scream. “He wouldn’t tell me, and then he was just gone.”

  “Gone?” I asked.

  She nodded fast a couple of times, wiped away another falling tear.

  “Did you ask Rainsford what happened?”

  “No, but I asked Dr. Stevens. She said the same thing: Talk to Rainsford. Do you think I ought to?”

  “Sure you should. Why not?”

  “Okay.”

  It was a hollow reply, as if she didn’t know any better what to say or she was just too emotionally spent to care.

  I glanced over my shoulder at all the doors in the room, wondering when Marisa would come back out. But that wasn’t going to happen until everyone was asleep, and Avery Varone was still out here.

  “Do you think the cures work?” I asked.

  “Yeah, they work,” she said.

  “Then why won’t you do it?”

  She rolled her eyes and laughed in a way that was filled with regret.

  “I say it, but no one listens.”

  “You can’t be cured,” I offered.

  She nodded, then leaned her head back on the soft leather couch, staring at the shadows on the ceiling.